Arjuna closed his eyes against the blaze and tried to remember.

He pictured the form of Vishnu he had always loved — not endless and terrifying, but a shape a heart could hold. The tall crown catching the light. The mace resting easily in one strong hand. The bright spinning discus in another. Four arms, not a thousand; a face you could look at without being burned; eyes that met yours and stayed.

"That," he breathed. "Let me see *that* again."

He remembered how, as a child, he had loved certain pictures of God — small enough to keep beside his bed, kind enough to talk to in the dark. The vast cosmic form was true, gloriously true; but it was like trying to hug the whole sky. What his heart wanted was the friend who could fit in a doorway and walk in and sit down beside him.

"O thousand-armed one," he said to the towering vision, "you who hold every world inside your body — I have seen your greatness, and I will never forget it. But please, fold all that vastness back into the shape I know. The crown. The mace. The discus. The four kind arms. Become that for me again."

He was not asking God to be smaller. He understood now that the gentle form and the cosmic form were the very same Lord, the way the same ocean can be a single cupped handful of water you lift to your lips, or the whole crashing sea that reaches past the horizon. He had drunk from the sea. Now he wanted the handful.

"Take that form," Arjuna asked softly, "and I will be able to breathe again."

And the great light, hearing him, began — slowly, gently — to gather itself in.